Supporting our Refugee Researchers

All of your donations will go directly to forced migrants to compensate them for their work at a fair local rate, reimburse their expenses (e.g. bus tickets around their city), and help them access basic research equipment (e.g. an audio recorder or Microsoft Word software).

Our forced migrant researchers, our faculty, and our staff all thank you for your support. It will help us in our mission to make the world a more inclusive place for migrants and hosts alike.

A local refugee aid center in Milan, Italy. Photo from our case researcher in Milan.

Migration research projects often rely on refugees who work as enumerators, translators, and fixers, with most of the research budget supporting expensive Western academics’ salaries.

RIT’s localized approach means that our commissioned research budget goes directly to forced migrants who are already living in the neighborhoods we are interested in learning from. We remotely manage and train these individuals, so our budget goes to those in need, not to pricey hotels or plane tickets for outsiders to visit “the field.” While this is not a long-term career, it provides career-building experience and training and some financial support for those scraping by one dollar at a time.